Movie star speaks out...

Updated: Jan 8, 2019

In my last post I praised the movie Afflicted. I truly believed it was a great representation of what people go through who suffer from chronic illnesses. I am saddened to learn that the people whose lives were chronicled in the movie are now speaking out and saying that they were misrepresented in the movie.

They say that they were made to appear crazy instead of having truly medically diagnosed illnesses. Let me inform you all, very clearly, that these people suffer from distinctively severe MEDICAL illnesses and were required to undergo psychiatric testing before even participating in this movie which deemed them NOT mentally ill in any way whatsoever. So why would the producers/directors want to edit the movie to make it seem that these people were “head cases” instead of just focusing on the truth? Herein lies the controversy of invisible illness and the battle that we are facing every day in my community of those who suffer with invisible illness.

Also, following the release of the movie the stars of the film are now suffering ramifications for disclosing their illnesses which are explained in the news article I have posted in the link below. They are being “bullied” and treated as if their illnesses are psychosomatic instead of true medical illnesses. This is completely ridiculous as they have all undergone massive amounts of clinical tests by western medicine physicians (ie. what we consider “normal doctors” here in the United States) which was not disclosed in the movie at all!

People have made assumptions about these wonderful souls who decided to open up their entire personal lives to us in order to educate society about how awful it is to live a life with these terrible diseases and now they are being treated like garbage just because a film company edited this movie for sensationalism instead of telling the story the way they should have. The actors/people in the film deserved better than that.

I still stand by my appreciation for this film because it does depict a lot of the treatments that I have been through trying to treat my Chronic Lyme Disease. It shows the true suffering of invisible illness and how everyone doesn’t believe you. It shows the stress that is placed on caregivers. It shows how your life is completely taken over by your disease and nothing else matters anymore. There are moments in this movie that show the truth of invisible illness and how MY LIFE is spent living every day. To the people who opened their personal lives to show the world the reality of invisible illness, I thank you.

To the film company who had the audacity to NOT SHOW the aspects of clinical medicine that these people went through so they could be validated that they are suffering from true MEDICAL illnesses…. you should be ashamed of yourselves. Maybe you had good intentions. Maybe you didn’t. How will we ever know? Regardless, the sting of societal retribution has now fallen upon the poor subjects of your film which is a shame because those people were already suffering enough, wouldn’t you admit? I think it would be best if you could try to find a way to make it better for them.

Here (below) is the link to the article written in the Daily Mail about the subjects of the movie who are now speaking out about how they were portrayed in the movie Afflicted. Feel free to read it and comment with how you feel but please watch the film objectively and try to be polite if possible with your comments. There has been enough pain and suffering around the world with chronic illness as it is. We can at least share our dialogue with kindness. Thank you so very much for being a part of my world….